New twist in case of Antarctica poisoning death
Rodney Marks. Photo / Supplied
The internal report is referred to in documents from the inquest into the death of Rodney David Marks, 32, an Australian astrophysicist, who died in Antarctica under mysterious circumstances.
The Herald on Sunday was last week granted access to the documents, which reveal heavy drinking and drug use at the American-run Amundsen-Scott South Pole Station.
The documents come from the New Zealand inquiry into Marks' death in 2000, which began after an autopsy in Christchurch discovered he had been poisoned by a fatal quantity of methanol.
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Allan Sandage, Astronomer, Dies at 84; Charted Cosmos’s Age and Expansion
Bart Bartholomew
Allan R. Sandage in 1991. He was an assistant to Edwin Hubble, and carried on his work.
By DENNIS OVERBYE
Published: November 17, 2010
Allan R. Sandage, who spent his life measuring the universe, becoming the most influential astronomer of his generation, died Saturday at his home in San Gabriel, Calif. He was 84.
The cause was pancreatic cancer, according to an announcement by the Carnegie Observatories, where he had spent his whole professional career.
Over more than six decades, Dr. Sandage was like one of those giant galaxies that sit at the center of a cluster of galaxies, dominating cosmic weather. He wrote more than 500 papers, ranging across the cosmos, covering the evolution and behavior of stars, the birth of the Milky Way galaxy, the age of the universe and the discovery of the first quasar, not to mention the Hubble constant, a famously contested number that measures the rate of expansion of the universe. Dr. Sandage pursued the number with his longtime collaborator, Gustav Tammann of the University of Basel in Switzerland.
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Brian G. Marsden, comet and asteroid tracker, dies at 73
Astronomer Brian G. Marsden, a comet and asteroid tracker, played a key role in the demotion of Pluto from major to minor planetary status. He died Nov.18 at age 73. (Harold Dorwin)
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By Thomas Maugh II
Wednesday, November 24, 2010; 12:28 AM Astronomer Brian G. Marsden, a comet and asteroid tracker who stood sentinel to warn of possible collisions with interplanetary rocks and other remnants of the solar system's creation, died Nov. 18 of cancer at a hospital in Burlington, Mass. He was 73.
Dr. Marsden, director emeritus of the Minor Planet Center at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics in Cambridge, Mass., was perhaps best known for his 1998 announcement that an asteroid known as 1997 XF11 might strike Earth in 2028, causing untold damage. The announcement sparked additional studies that quickly concluded that such a collision was unlikely.
Dr. Marsden, who the New York Times once called "a cheery herald of fear," also gained a certain amount of renown when he played a key role in the demotion of Pluto from major to minor planetary status.
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In 1946, in anticipation of the future of space flight, Whipple invented a thin outer skin of metal to protect spacecrafts. Meteors disintegrated when they hit the shield, known as a meteor bumper or Whipple shield, leaving only vapour to hit the spacecraft. The technology is still in use today.
He was also ahead of the curve in 1957, when the Soviet Union launched the Sputnik satellite. At the time, Whipple was setting up a network of cameras to track it and one station was already operational.
Former President John F Kennedy honoured Whipple with an Award for Distinguished Public Service in 1963 for the project.
Whipple was director of the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory in Cambridge from 1955 to 1973, when it merged with the Harvard Observatory and was renamed the Harvard-Smithsonian Centre for Astrophysics.
Whipple retired from Harvard in 1977, although he continued to bicycle to the centre six days a week until he was 90. The licence plate on his car was "COMETS."
John Huchra Dies at 61; Maps Altered Ideas on Universe
By DENNIS OVERBYE
Published: October 13, 2010
John Huchra, a man who loved telescopes and whose pioneering maps of a bubbly universe challenged notions of how the galaxies were born, died on Friday at his home in Lexington, Mass. He was 61.
John P. Huchra was an astronomer at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics.
Dr. Huchra (pronounced HUCK-rah) was an enthusiastic observer, logging as many as 130 nights a year at telescopes around the world. He was gregarious as well, bringing home students for Thanksgiving and holding a leadership role or membership in virtually every important body related to astronomy, including the American Astronomical Society, of which he had been president.
“His passing has upset more of us than I remember for any other astronomer,” said Tod Lauer, an astronomer at the National Optical Astronomy Observatory in Tucson.
Dr. Huchra will be remembered as well for what looks for all the world like a child’s stick-figure drawing of a man, but in fact is a map showing how the galaxies are distributed through about 600 million light-years of space.
NASA van rolls into canyon in So Cal; 3 dead
Seven other injurednear Jet Propulsion Lab
LA CANADA FLINTRIDGE, Calif. — A commuter van from NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory tumbled 200 feet (60 meters) off a twisting mountain road Wednesday, killing three people and injuring seven, two critically, authorities said.
The van was carrying 10 people to the laboratory when it plunged off the Angeles Crest Highway in the Angeles National Forest about 6:30 a.m. PT and rolled down a mountainside about 15 miles (24 kilometers) north of downtown Los Angeles, Los Angeles County Fire Department inspector Ron Haralson said.Notified by a driver who saw the crash, two California Highway Patrol officers at a nearby movie shoot scrambled down to the vehicle and called for rescue workers who ripped the van apart to get to the injured passengers.
One person was hurled from the van and died at the scene. Two others died inside the van, where other victims were left hanging from windows or trapped under a collapsed roof for as long as an hour, authorities said.
“It’s one of the most gruesome scenes I’ve ever seen,” said Mike Leum, chief of the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department search and rescue team. “There was a complete collapse of the roof onto the passenger area.”
'Very, very sad day' The van was carrying six employees of the lab in Pasadena, two contractors and two NASA employees, said Blaine Baggett, a spokesman at JPL, which is the control center for several NASA projects, including the Mars rovers.
Astronomer Eugene Shoemaker dies in car crash
Astronomer Eugene Shoemaker, who co-discovered the comet that slammed into Jupiter in 1994, was killed in a car accident Friday in Australia during an annual trip to search for asteroid craters. He was 69. Shoemaker died in a two-car accident on a dirt road about 310 miles north of Alice Springs, in central Australia, police there said.His wife, Carolyn, another Lowell Observatory astronomer who shared in the Jupiter comet's discovery, was airlifted to a hospital, where her condition was not known, police in Alice Springs said. Shoemaker was perhaps best known for helping to discover comet Shoemaker-Levy 9, which broke up and spectacularly slammed into the giant, gaseous planet in 1994. Amateur astronomer David Levy was also on the team. A geologist by training, Shoemaker was also a leading expert on craters and the interplanetary collisions that caused them. He lived just a short drive from Arizona's famous Meteor Crater and first proved to the scientific community that it was indeed the result of an asteroid, said University of Arizona planetary scientist Larry Lebofsky.
Astronomer Eugene Shoemaker, who co-discovered the comet that slammed into Jupiter in 1994, was killed in a car accident Friday in Australia during an annual trip to search for asteroid craters. He was 69. Shoemaker died in a two-car accident on a dirt road about 310 miles north of Alice Springs, in central Australia, police there said.His wife, Carolyn, another Lowell Observatory astronomer who shared in the Jupiter comet's discovery, was airlifted to a hospital, where her condition was not known, police in Alice Springs said. Shoemaker was perhaps best known for helping to discover comet Shoemaker-Levy 9, which broke up and spectacularly slammed into the giant, gaseous planet in 1994. Amateur astronomer David Levy was also on the team. A geologist by training, Shoemaker was also a leading expert on craters and the interplanetary collisions that caused them. He lived just a short drive from Arizona's famous Meteor Crater and first proved to the scientific community that it was indeed the result of an asteroid, said University of Arizona planetary scientist Larry Lebofsky.
Dr. Robert S. Harrington, the chief astronomer of the U.S. Naval Observatory, died before he could publicize the fact that Planet X is approaching our Solar System. Many feel his death part of a cove-up? One in which government agencies quickly moved to conceal the most earth-shaking discovery in history. If so, the search for truth begins in New Zealand. In 1991, Dr. Robert S. Harrington, the chief astronomer of the U.S. Naval Observatory, took a puny 8-inch telescope to Black Birch, New Zealand, one of the few viewing points on Earth optimal for sighting Planet X, which he definitively calculated to be approaching from below the ecliptic at an angle of 40 degrees.
Planet X and the Mysterious Death of Dr. Robert Harrington
YOWUSA.COM, 22-May-2008 John DiNardo Janice Manning
Dr. Robert S. Harrington, the chief astronomer of the U.S. Naval Observatory, died before he could publicize the fact that Planet X is approaching our Solar System. Many feel his death part of a cove-up? One in which government agencies quickly moved to conceal the most earth-shaking discovery in history. If so, the search for truth begins in New Zealand. In 1991, Dr. Robert S. Harrington, the chief astronomer of the U.S. Naval Observatory, took a puny 8-inch telescope to Black Birch, New Zealand, one of the few viewing points on Earth optimal for sighting Planet X, which he definitively calculated to be approaching from below the ecliptic at an angle of 40 degrees.
PDF Download: The Location of Planet X by R. S. Harrington, October 1988 (Yowusa.com Subscribers Only)However, the source below quotes Dr. Harrington as predicting 30 degrees, not 40.
The Independent, September 18, 1990 Lexical priming and the properties of text, quotation of British newspaper,
Dr Harrington says the most remarkable feature predicted for Planet X is that its orbit is tilted 30 degrees away from the ecliptic, the main plane of the solar system, where all previous searches have concentrated. His models also predict a greater distance from the Sun, about 10 billion miles, or between two or three times as distant as Pluto.
By analyzing time-lapse photographs using the "blink comparison" technique, originated by famed Pluto discoverer, Clyde Tombaugh, Dr. Harrington proved that Planet X was indeed inbound into our Solar System. Harrington sent back reports of this ominous discovery, but died of what was reported to be esophageal cancer before he could pack up his telescope and come home to hold what would have been a highly publicized press conference. The source below indicates that Harrington began the search at Black Birch in April, 1991, two years before his death. However, considering the painstaking process of trying to find a distant needle in a very large haystack, two years is not much time at all.
20 killed in cable car disaster
Twenty people were killed in the French Alps yesterday when a cable car taking staff, cleaners and maintenance workers to an international astronomical observatory fell 80 metres (260ft) to the valley below.
There were no survivors in the accident, which happened soon after 7.30am about a mile outside the village of St-Etienne-en-Dévoluy, near Gap in south-eastern France. The privately operated cable car was on its way up to the Pic de Bure observatory. "It was a horrific sight," said Magali Espinasse, the local doctor's assistant, who was comforting victims' relatives. "No one could have survived it and no one did. There were bodies scattered over a big area and there was almost nothing left of the cabin itself. It was like the aftermath of a plane crash." The authorities confirmed that 20 bodies were recovered. "The cable car fell. We don't know why. These are working people and now they are dead," the mayor, Jean-Marie Bernard, said at a hastily organised crisis centre in the local tourist office. "The mountains are in mourning today. Nothing could have led us to expect such a disaster." Saying there had clearly been "a very serious malfunction", the state prosecutor, Michel Selaries, announced a manslaughter inquiry. Investigators said they were examining a witness's statement that the cabin had nearly reached the peak before it began suddenly sliding back down the cable, gathering speed and plunging to the ground. The French association of cable car operators said the accident seemed to have been caused by the cabin becoming unhooked from the cable rather than by the cable itself snapping. "The system was built in the early 1980s and was in perfect working order," its spokesman said. "It passed a safety inspection late last year and was really thoroughly serviced - like you would replace a man's heart and lungs." He added that the incident was the worst cable car catastrophe in France's history. The death toll equalled that of the disaster in the Italian resort of Cavalese in February last year when a US marine jet on a training flight severed the cable of a ski gondola. At least five of the victims worked for a local building firm and came from St-Etienne, a ski and mountain-walking resort beneath the spectacular Pic de Bure plateau. They were on their way to carry out annual maintenance work on the research station, which is manned year-round by scientists from France, Germany and Spain. Outside town hall, where counsellors and psychologists were comforting relatives, many of the village's 500 residents gathered silently in the hot sunshine. "I had friends among them," a grey-haired woman said as she was led weeping into the building. Others said they were too upset to speak. "These mountain communities have a lot of heart," said Marcel Lesbros, a senator for the Hautes-Alpes region, who visited the village later in the afternoon. "Everyone here is personally touched by this."David Burstein, longtime ASU astronomy professor, dies
David Burstein, a longtime Arizona State University astronomy professor known for patience, passion and his work as one of the "seven samurai," who discovered the universe was expanding lopsidedly, died last week. He was 62. The famed astronomer spent his career as one of the world's experts on the structure of galaxies and the populations of stars that are in them. His work contributed to a team of seven astronomers who spent nearly a decade researching how the universe was expanding.
"It was a very careful study of galaxies and how far away they are and how fast they were moving, and we needed to know the properties of the galaxies," said Alan Dressler, a fellow samurai, as they were nicknamed, describing Burstein's contribution. The seven astronomers began exploring the universe together in 1980.
In 1986, the group announced its findings that the universe was expanding unevenly and that it was being pulled by the gravity of a large mass - a cluster of tens of thousands of galaxies - 150 million light years away. Though Dressler wrote about his personality clashes with Burstein in his book on the project, "Voyage to the Great Attractor," he said he greatly respected his colleague, who he met when they were both graduate students at the University of California, Santa Cruz. Occasionally, Dressler, who works for the Carnegie Institution in its California observatories, would visit Burstein in his office at ASU and noted his dedication to teaching. "I was amazed at the patience and interest he showed with his students because he wasn't always that patient with me. You could sometimes tell students hadn't done the work and he was really patient with him, and he really worked at it," Dressler said. Raised in New Jersey, Burstein showed an interest in science and astronomy as a child, reading his family's encyclopedia set from cover to cover when he was 12. He went on to earn his bachelor's degree in physics at Wesleyan University in Connecticut before trekking to California for his Ph.D.
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